Renewables Work Just Fine – Provided There’s a Diesel in the Shed

You can have your solar panels
and your turbines on the hills;
You can use the warmth of sunshine
to reduce your heating bills.

You can dream you’re self-sufficient
as you weed your vegie bed;
As long as you make sure to keep
A diesel in the shed.

When I was a kid on a dairy farm in Queensland, we relied on green energy – horses and human muscles provided motive power; fire-wood and beeswax candles supplied heat and light; windmills pumped water and the sun provided solar energy for growing crops, vegies and pastures. The only “non-green” energy used was a bit of kerosene for the kitchen lamp, and petrol for a small Ford utility.

Our life changed dramatically when we put a diesel in the dairy shed. This single-cylinder engine drove the milking machines, the cream separator and an electricity generator, which charged 16 lead-acid 2 volt batteries sitting on the veranda. This 32 volt DC system powered a modern marvel – bright light, at any time, in every room, at the touch of a switch.

There were no electric self-starters for diesels in those days – just a heavy crank handle. But all that effort, noise and fumes were superseded when every house and dairy got connected to clean silent “coal power by wire”. Suddenly the trusty “Southern Cross” diesel engines disappeared from Australian sheds and dairies.

In just one life-time, candles and kerosene were replaced by diesel, which was then replaced by clean silent ever-ready electricity.

Today, after Aussies have enjoyed decades of abundant reliable cheap electricity from coal, green energy gambling has taken Australia back to the era which kept a diesel in the shed.

Tasmania is the greenest state in Australia. It once had a vibrant economy that created mines, saw-mills, farms, orchards, oil and metal refineries, dams, hydro-power and railways. It is now a green no-go land. Greens have stopped new hydro developments, opposed mining, crippled the timber industry, prevented new wood-chip developments and will probably celebrate when their last refinery closes.

Tasmanians get their electricity mainly from hydro assets created long ago by their more productive ancestors. But recently a long drought caused a shortage of Tasmanian hydro-energy – they became reliant for up to 40% of their electricity needs on the Bass-link undersea cable bringing electricity from reliable coal-fired stations in Victoria and NSW. However the overloaded Bass Link cable failed, and an old gas-powered station was brought back into service (importing gas from Victoria) to keep the lights on.

Subsequently their politicians hurriedly put 150 diesel generators in their shed (costing A$11 million per month).

South Australia is the next greenest state in Australia, hosting about 35% of Australia’s wind turbines. These were force-fed into existence by mandatory green energy targets and tax benefits. In a burst of green destruction they also closed their gas-fired power stations and demolished their coal-fired station.

However wind power failed recently and a storm tore down their life-line bringing reliable coal power from Victoria. Now Premier Weatherill is planning to install up to 200 megawatts of diesel generators in his shed. Many residents are following his lead.

As some wag said:

Question: “What did South Australians have before candles?”
Answer: “Electricity”.

The UK has been badly infected by the green energy virus. Engineers warned that this intermittent and unpredictable supply had increased the risk of blackouts, so the UK government offered subsidies for emergency backup power. This subsidy, plus consumer concerns, put so many diesels in British sheds that they now provide a major backup capacity for UK electricity.

Many Spaniards found a diesel in the shed was very profitable. Their government had been drinking green-ale and offered attractive subsidies for solar power produced. The subsidy was very successful – so successful that someone eventually noticed that some suppliers were even producing “solar” power at night. It was coming from diesels in their sheds.

Finally, our green media likes to feature some green energy enthusiast who is “off the grid”. But it usually emerges later in the show that there is a diesel in their shed too.

Those who remember the days of relying on a noisy smelly diesel in the shed have no wish to be dragged back there by green zealots.Pickering Post

Comments

Neat poem. Diesel Fumes are carcinogenic causing lung cancer and increased risks of bladder cancer and noisy back-up generators in suburbia could be problematic for neighbours. The wind industry should foot some or all of the bill for these back-ups to their mess out of their free subsidies, research funds and profits. Wind Industry subsidies should be stopped period.

This industry economically and environmentally destroys Australia with wind turbine installations, ‘35,000’ homes at a time. Wind companies advertise a certain number of homes can be powered by wind generated energy and it’s an insulting misconception. They never spruik providing energy to industries or businesses and cannot guarantee meeting demand. Wind invariably naturally stops, becomes a whisper of a breeze or during maintenance of towers, blades, or other infrastructure, blades droop uselessly and turbine generation stops and those 35,000 homes and the rest are powerless. It seems battery back-ups and interconnectors are also useless band aid solutions.

Businesses are forking out millions of dollars from repeated damaging power failures and along with residents fork out huge sums in energy bills. Meanwhile down on the farm sonic emissions and health impacts relentlessly continue under certain operational conditions and for many LFN impacts are a daily and constant reality. The requested moratorium on wind installations was ruthlessly ignored and the long-term cost is devastating.

Reblogged this on Climatism and commented:
“Subsequently their politicians hurriedly put 150 diesel generators in their shed (costing A$11 million per month).”

THIS IS the result of Tasmania’s (job and economy wrecking) push for ‘unreliable’ green-energy sources based on fake global warming scares and climate change hysteria.

Another classic example of how “green” hysteria and global warming policies are doing far more damage than any prophesied weather or climate event could ever do by next century or when the so-called ‘experts’ predict.

Our witless feeble minded prime minister’s idea of the ‘diesel in the shed’ is open cycle gas turbines plus diesels – things are normal, insanity is prevailing. PS, we are presently refurbishing our old diesel plant that used to run the shearing plant.